When I was a young writer
I worried about the rules.
Lay or lie.
Lie or lay.
Spell everything right
before spell check
came along
to save my ass.
Commas.
Colons.
Semicolons.
Which fucking one is which?
I worried about sentences
being proper.
Paragraphs behaving themselves.
Words staying inside
the lines.
I thought good writing
meant getting everything perfect.
Every word in its place.
Every sentence polished
until it was shiny and sterile.
I thought that was the point.
Then somewhere along the way
I figured out
I wasn\'t trying to pass
an English test.
I was trying to make
somebody see something.
Paint a picture
with words.
Frame it
with a few good phrases.
Let the soul speak.
Make them smell it.
Taste it.
See the juice
run down their face.
Hear it.
The sound of a freight train
speeding over gravel.
Touch it.
Make them stand there
inside the moment
with you.
The rules can wait.
The picture can\'t.
And if the comma
ends up in the wrong place,
well,
maybe the damn thing
needed to be there.